


Motherless

by rainstormcolors



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-03
Updated: 2020-06-03
Packaged: 2021-03-03 18:46:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24520294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainstormcolors/pseuds/rainstormcolors
Summary: A short angsty Kaiba brothers story.
Relationships: Kaiba Mokuba & Kaiba Seto
Comments: 7
Kudos: 14





	Motherless

He didn’t like the neighbor lady’s face. He didn’t like how she would pat him on the top of his head. He didn’t like the lavender pinstriped wallpaper in her house. She had greying hair and she would sing in whispers to the new baby who everyone who could care seemed to circle. She would bring him and the baby back to their father at their home near the end of the street, ember-colored light orbed in the windows.

Their father didn’t talk much, not anymore. He’d hold the baby, offer the baby bottles or a stuffed rabbit. The baby would cry. That was all there was.

He would cry too. Their father just held the baby. Their father didn’t talk much.

One day the neighbor lady baked a vanilla cake as he and the baby stayed in her living room. He watched as she frosted the soft golden square in sugary white. She brought the cake with her this time when she dropped off him and the baby.

The cake was set on the kitchen counter and their father held the baby.

“Can I have a piece?” he asked their father.

Their father didn’t notice.

“Can I have a piece please?” he asked again.

“Not now, Seto.”

Their father walked off with the baby pressed to his chest. The glass of the windows faded slowly from grey to marine dark. Somewhere in the house the baby began to cry.

And so Seto stood on his toes to reach for the plate holding the cake, and with everything he had he flung them both hard to the floor.

—

The Infinite Darkness was his parents’ bedroom as he opened the door for the final time as an eight-year-old child. The Infinite Darkness was a shattered window at the top of a skyscraper. The Infinite Darkness was a stone doorway somewhere deep in Egypt.

“Mokuba’s waiting for you,” Atem told him.

“I know he is,” Seto answered.

And the Infinite Darkness no longer seemed so infinite and so dark and Seto didn’t belong here.

—

Seto had been aware of Mokuba, plum-black hair cut to the shoulders and wearing a blue long-sleeved v-neck, silently playing a handheld game on the vanilla-white sofa across the room as Seto sorted through holographic data despite it being his day off. The sky held outside was translucent and warm and blue, and Seto had been aware of Mokuba standing to leave the room. The sudden crash of the small trashcan punted to the wall caused Seto to flinch, a knot curling in him, and he looked from his holograms to Mokuba who stared at the tumbled trashcan, Mokuba’s fists tight.

“Hey…” Mokuba said quietly, a kind of crumbling quality in his voice, fists unraveling, shoulders softening, “Could we… could we go to the park together maybe? Please?” And Mokuba wasn’t looking at him and Seto felt pressure in his chest.

“Yes. Alright,” Seto answered.

And Mokuba looked back to him with a shy smile, with unsure eyes.

—

They pulled themselves into a handsome black car as driver and passenger. It was better, or maybe worse, that Isono didn’t join them. Reflections of tree branches moved over the car like jade clouds as they drove through the property and out into the world. Mokuba fiddled with the dials to play music: a mixture of electronic notes and guitar riffs, a woman’s hum. And they were silent for the first ten minutes of the journey, Mokuba staring out the window away from Seto. Once before Seto had stared out the window in this same way, when Mokuba was three-years-old and clueless about where they were being taken. Seto couldn’t face Mokuba back then.

Seto held a breath. “How… are you doing?” he asked. He felt Mokuba’s pause.

“I’m okay. I’ve been better.”

Electric wires and trees and sky moved over them inside the car.

“Did you want to talk?” Seto was afraid to ask it but he did.

“I just want to be with you,” Mokuba said, shifting to look out the front window towards the road.

The park appeared to them. Past the post-and-rail fence was the parking lot and the Eden glitter of silver water. Seto parked and the two stepped out from the car, Mokuba doing so more quickly. Seto watched Mokuba walk to the small lake’s shore, the reflections of the water forming a halo around him. The breeze was kind. Reeds danced and shimmered in patches and there was a washed-up log half in water, and Seto met the shore behind Mokuba.

“We haven’t been here in a while, huh?” Mokuba said turning back to him, “Though it’s out of the way anyway.” Mokuba softly tossed a branch with his toe.

A pair of waterbirds bobbed on the lake surface.

And the two brothers walked.

“Himeko snuck me out here for afternoons a few times,” Mokuba said. To Seto, Himeko was the maid. “It sucks you couldn’t come.” Their _other father_ wouldn’t have it.

Mokuba had been the one to choose this place. He’d brought Seto here before, after they returned home together from Duelist Kingdom.

The trees overhead became thicker, clumping them in cool shadow. The sky between branches glistened like quartz.

“Was it fun coming here?” Seto asked.

“Yeah,” Mokuba faintly smiled to him.

At some point Seto hadn’t been able to stand on his own anymore. He needed someone to light the way. He’d felt like he was clawing in darkness. Why had Atem’s smile been so kind? Why was Mokuba smiling at him now?

“T-thank you for showing me then,” Seto said.

Mokuba shut his eyes with a brief and more lively smile. “You need to learn to relax. You work too much.”

The journey wasn’t over. Mokuba turned back to walk.

The water sparkled with life. And the two brothers walked together.


End file.
